Matters of the heart

Life is all about the heart. It's that subjective place in your psyche where thought, emotion and intuition all come together, and when things don't make sense in your head they say go with your gut, or follow your heart. Following our hearts has been the order of the week, as we had our second meeting with Sharon, our adoption placement worker. She brought with her some information on a lead she found for us. Now I'm not going to publish particulars here, as the information is personal and we don't know how things will unfold. We do have a name, and we know it's a girl who turned 10 recently. She lives with a foster family right here in Edmonton and we have been made aware of her issues, needs and some family background. Sharon said that this "felt" like a good match for us, and the chances of a placement were good even though there were 8 other families out there who were matched to this girl. Next week is the placement meeting, where a committee decides who should be matched with this girl. If it's us then then next step is to meet with her foster parents and the professionals who work with her, and only then can we make an informed, formal decision about becoming her parents.

In our hearts we feel this is the one. The word I would use to describe the profile compatibility is uncanny; actually a better one would be divine. But all the same we don't want to get too excited as we don't know for a fact that this is the one. The most exciting thing about this potential match is that she has a Christian background and wants to get baptized! Now here's the scary part; if we are selected and we decide to be her placement home, things will move quickly. We're talking about a time table of weeks, not months. There are certain factors behind this, and as such the "seamless" placement process they told us about won't apply here. So potentially we could be parents by Christmas. When I heard this my eyes went buggy and all I could say was "Whoa..." Suddenly the thought of becoming a dad so soon made me think about getting stuff done, like finishing my degree. And what about the renos we were in the middle of? Pressure, pressure!

Now, I don't know if that factored into things here, but I did go through another episode of the heart. This time I'm talking about that muscle in your chest that pumps blood through your body. Wednesday night around midnight I woke up because my heart felt like it was racing and fluttering, which was rather uncomfortable to say the least. I lay in bed for about 10 minutes and then woke Angel up to tell her what's going on. She drove me to emergency where they hooked me up to an EKG machine, and the nurse who's looking at my readings says I have an irregular heart beat (No kidding I think to myself, I got a front row seat to this show!). The doctor comes in after looking at my readings and tells me I have Atrial Fibrillation, which basically means that the electrical impulses in my heart were going haywire. This causes build-up of fluid in the sac around your heart and can potentially cause a stroke. Not cool! Apparently I was an uncommon patient as they said I was really young to be having this sort of thing.

So they started an I.V. and they administered a drug to slow my heart rate down, which was up to 150 beats per minute. Then they started me on another I.V. drug that would bring my heart beat back to a normal rhythm. Now if that didn't do the trick by the time it took to administer this drug (1 hour) they were going to knock me out & take the paddles to me. Fortunately it didn't get to that as my heart rhythm finally returned to normal. So that, plus blood work, chest x-rays and an 8 hour stay in emerg later we were finally home again for some well deserved sleep. They told us to expect a call from a heart specialist to follow up; well three hours later the phone wakes us up, and it's the cardiologist office telling me my appointment is for Friday (today) at 1pm. Now if you know anything about the Canadian health care system you expect wait times, so we were very surprised that I got in so quickly. They did a stress test (which showed normal) and an echo cardiogram, which I won't get the results back till next week. I swear I saw a baby's head on the ultrasound monitor... If I did, the technician said, I was in really big trouble.

So lots of excitement this week. Too much if you ask me! But I learned I have to take care of my heart, and I don't just mean the daily aspirin I have to take for life now. I have to trust God with everything that went on. I have to trust that God will provide a child for us, whether it's this girl or not. I have to trust that God will take care of my health and that this heart thing won't screw up our becoming parents. It was tempting to tell God, as I was laying in emerg, that once again He was "screwing" with my life. What if I become sick and they won't let us adopt because my health is failing? It all boils down to one simple question: Do I believe God is good, and has our best intentions for us? But I resolved to trust that Father knows what He's doing, and that He'll take care of things. Maybe the afib was a test, I don't know. The doctors don't seem to know what caused my heart to go haywire either. But God does, and He works all things for the good of those who love Him. As far as He's concerned these are all matters of the heart, and in the end that's all He's after.